Unofficial news and tips about Google

December 16, 2011

Google Zeitgeist 2011

Google Zeitgeist 2011, the list of the fastest rising queries in 2011, brings a great news for Google: the second most popular query this year was [Google+]. It's the first time in Google's history when a Google service makes the top 3. In 2005, [orkut] was the 5th gainer, while [youtube] was the 6th fastest rising query in 2007.

"Google+ became the fastest growing social network, acquiring more than 10 million users in three weeks. From July 3 - 17, Google+ and related keywords like Google Plus and Google + had more traffic than the keyword Sports," explains Google.

It's interesting to notice that 2011 is the first year since 2007 when Facebook is no longer included in the top 10 rising queries. Google+ is actually the only online service from the top 10, down from 6 services last year (Chatroulette, Friz, Myxer, Twitter, Gamezer, Facebook).

They're not the most popular, just the fastest rising queries in 2011. For example, queries like "news", "mp3", "games", "weather" are always popular and you'd always find them in the list of the most popular searches. Zeitgeist's goal is to find the queries that are a lot more popular than last year and that are defining for this year. Even though a lot more people search for "facebook" than for "google+", Facebook's growth rate couldn't keep up with Google+.